


wild magic

by themorninglark



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, M/M, Piano, Vignettes, Washington D.C., alternating povs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-28 00:56:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5071765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Lovely,</em> thought Adam, listening to Gansey talk to his tailor.</p><p><em>Lovely,</em> he'd thought, the first time Gansey turned around at a roadside, looked him full in the eye and said <em>Adam Parrish, right?</em>, lovely, in a way that Adam could never be, because it was a loveliness born, not bred; it was the very embodiment of the <em>sound</em> of that word, <em>lovely</em>, with its lilting <em>l</em>s, trilling lightly off the tongue and tossed into the wind like a silk scarf fluttering on the summer breeze.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wild magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gliss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gliss/gifts).



> For Lily, who was indirectly responsible for my induction into TRC hell. Happy birthday ♥

"I don't know why I have a phone, sometimes," Gansey remarked.

Leaning back against a pillar of the Gansey mansion, Adam was a picture. His posture was perfect. Straight as a rod. His hands, with their slender fingers and worn-out cuticles, hands that Gansey knew well—hands he'd seen with the shameful marks of grease and labour all over them, hands that would betray him in this place—

They hid themselves in pockets, disappeared behind tapered pants that flattered his body.

Adam said nothing, merely eyed Gansey with curiosity.

"It's not like I have anyone to talk to. _You_ don't have one. Blue doesn't, either. Ronan—well, he's _Ronan_. And I don't think AT &T would let Noah sign up for a phone plan."

"No," Adam concurred, with a smile. "They wouldn't."

Gansey fished his phone out of his pocket. Like everything he owned, it had been purchased brand new, shinier than a pin, and he had hated the weight of it. He left it lying about, let it pick up dents and scratches from being dropped on the helicopter floor, or chucked in the backseat of the Pig.

He turned it over now, holding it like an extension of himself he'd only just noticed, tossed it lightly into the air and caught it again.

"So what's this for, then?"

When Adam spoke, his answer came easy, easier than his words in his carefully neutral accent, his DC accent. His Aglionby accent. "For your family."

Said family were partaking of tea and little lemon cakes indoors. Gansey spared them a fleeting glance through the half-open door, thought: he was rather fond of lemon cakes, but he'd had his fill of cucumber sandwiches and Earl Grey and yes, after all, this was better—stealing away to the back porch with Adam, in search of a space to remember who they were.

He felt a dull kind of pang throb through him, that even alone like this, Adam still watched his accent around Gansey.

"For you," Adam added.

Gansey looked up.

Adam's jawline wasn't what anyone would call _strong_. It was delicate, drawn in a line so fine that the mere sneeze of eraser dust could blow it away. But when Adam's mouth was set like this, quirking upwards wryly and framed in the unforgiving twilight, Gansey knew it was peril to look, and greater peril still to tear his eyes away.

"What kind of Aglionby boy doesn't own a cell phone?"

"You," Gansey blurted out.

Immediately, he regretted it. Adam's lip curled, and Gansey knew this was the answer he'd been waiting for.

"Exactly. If you didn't have your phone, and your patent leather shoes, and that sweater that smells of pine…"

Gansey knew exactly which sweater Adam was talking about, and he hated himself for it, hated that even after all this time _this_ was what Adam noticed about him, his pine-fresh clothing and his expensive footwear.

"…you'd be me," Adam finished. "And you can't have that."

He said it matter-of-factly, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

 

 

 

 _Lovely,_ thought Adam, listening to Gansey talk to his tailor.

 _Lovely,_ he'd thought, the first time Gansey turned around at a roadside, looked him full in the eye and said _Adam Parrish, right?_ , lovely, in a way that Adam could never be, because it was a loveliness born, not bred; it was the very embodiment of the _sound_ of that word, _lovely_ , with its lilting _l_ s, trilling lightly off the tongue and tossed into the wind like a silk scarf fluttering on the summer breeze. Trapping the light in its rippling folds. Lovely.

He barely registered what Gansey was saying. He let that voice wash over him, let the shadows on the ground fall at his feet. He did not touch anything. One square inch of any of these fabrics probably cost more than his entire outfit.

"…Adam."

Adam looked up.

The dark, varnished wooden floor of the tailor shop seemed to fade into the background, into the same kind of tasteful discretion as everything else in here. This was the kind of shop that made its presence known by its tasteful silence. There was no signboard over the door. It didn't need one. It smelled of mint, because of Gansey; it smelled of old money, because—

This was Gansey's world.

With one hand raised, Gansey beckoned him to the counter. "Come."

Adam went.

He stretched his arms out, let Gansey's clever Italian tailor run an appraising hand over his frame and take measurements where he'd never even known there were measurements to be taken. Shoulder to shoulder. Crotch to ankle. Base of his neck. _Around_ his neck.

The tape felt like a beautiful woven noose. There was no threat in it. It was so fine and slippery that Adam could have torn it off any time he wanted.

He did not tear it off.

He stood still, like an obedient model student, while Gansey took a step back.

He ran his thumb across his bottom lip. There was a faint kind of furrow between his brows as he eyed Adam, appraisingly.

In that moment, his loveliness became a chasm between them, one that Adam could never imagine bridging, even with this armour of worsted wool and the tiny little stitches that promised to hold him together, keep him from crumbling to pieces.

Gansey's lips parted, like he wanted to say something. He paused. Closed them again, softly.

Adam could imagine any number of possibilities to fill in the blank. They had entire conversations without words, after all, Adam and Gansey. Exchanging looks over Ronan. Over the women of 300 Fox Way. Over Declan. Over the state of the Camaro.

But Adam was unknowable, and here, so was Gansey.

 

 

 

Gansey sighed. He rested his head against the door frame.

"Why are we talking of this?"

"You brought up your phone," said Adam.

"I did. Why did I bring up my phone?"

Adam shrugged.

Gansey looked down at the cell phone, still in his hand.

"Maybe I was thinking of getting out of here," he said.

A faint smile flickered across Adam's lips. In the distance, the sun's last rays were slowly vanishing; everything seemed so languid, here, like time didn't matter. After all, they had the luxury of afternoon tea and lounging on back porches, staring out at ivy-covered gazebos. What could possibly be the hurry? Where would the rest of the universe go, without them?

From his family, Gansey had learned not to pay any heed, not to be bound by the earthly parameters that shackled ordinary men, and from Adam Parrish, he had learned to be ashamed of his thoughtlessness.

_For I am ordinary. Adam, I'm more ordinary than you ever were or will be. Magician._

"Who would you call, though?" Adam asked. "Lynch?"

Gansey's answering laugh was mirthful and derisive all at once, and Adam laughed with him. The sound of their mingled voices rang out, pealed clear as a bell across the empty garden, and suddenly they were eighteen-year-olds missing their friends, strangers who'd bumped into each other violently, carelessly, boys who wanted nothing more than a pizza and a Coke.

"Jesus," said Gansey.

He didn't need to complete the thought.

"Yeah. You might as well try calling _him_." said Adam, dryly. "Jesus, that is."

He said _Jesus_ the same way he said _Lynch_ , like an atheist whose disbelief was so pure, so very naked and straightforward in its wholesome truth, that it became his religion; the strangely unshakeable pillar of his world.

But then he looked at Gansey, and mouthed his name on the sweltering summer's sundown. _Gansey—_ plaintive and real, Gansey, by his side—

And Gansey, gazing earnestly up into those blue eyes, that face like an opaque mirror, said, "Thank you."

Adam raised an eyebrow. "For what?"

"Coming here. With me. I know it isn't easy. All _this_."

Gansey gestured vaguely with one hand, glancing over towards the inside of his house.

"I never expect anything to be easy," said Adam.

Gansey, annoyed at himself, annoyed at how easily he could spin silver-tongued niceties for party guests but say all the wrong things to his best friends, bit off a frustrated sigh. "Well, thanks anyway."

From inside, he heard the strains of a piano; _Helen_ , he thought, before he thought _Chopin_ , subtle and dreamy, the ghost of a wistful melancholy that danced light as snowdrops, dark as the night on the air.

He looked at Adam, his nocturne, his harmony.

Adam straightened. He walked over to the steps, sat down next to Gansey and leaned back, palms resting on the cool marble of the porch. His jacket was still cleanly buttoned. Gansey had given up on his long ago.

"Helen plays well," remarked Adam.

"I'm better," said Gansey, with a grin, and Adam rolled his eyes. Gansey caught the smirk on his lips, moments before it gave way into a warm, throaty chuckle.

"Play for me, then, Gansey," said Adam, and he shot Gansey a look, half in shadow, half in light; his smile, in that moment, was dust and mountains and the landscape of an old country, it was the cinnamon of fall and the sunset of Virginia.

Gansey's heart ached, light as a feather as it beat against his chest.

 

 

 

_Lovely._

When Helen played, the piano was her companion, her instrument, and she was a master; when Gansey played, the piano was simply—

His voice.

Adam felt a chill down his spine, like the burn of dry ice.

The night sky in DC glittered. Even the stars seemed brighter here, like they knew that people were watching, judging, and they polished themselves to a shine; Adam could see them through the clear glass of the patio's sliding doors, and here, against their silent splendour, was Gansey's for the world to hear.

Except that the world, now, was reduced to Adam Parrish, sleepless interloper and audience of one.

Adam was no music connoisseur. The awful mix tape that Ronan had made him for his car, regrettably enough, did not cover the basics of classical, and he did not know his Bach from his Beethoven, had never had time to devote himself to such aristocratic learning. He had absolutely no idea what Gansey was playing right now. Gansey hadn't thought to tell him.

He'd simply sat down. Opened the piano lid, ran a reverent hand across the keys, and started to play without a word. There was something sacred in the act.

 _Because_ , thought Adam, this was _Gansey_ , and Gansey made everything sacred.

Some people, like Ronan, went to church; some, like Adam, avoided it, and then there were the Ganseys of this world, who didn't need to go to church because it came with them wherever they went. Their praise was in their every word, every lilting syllable of their _lovely, lovely_ voice, they effortlessly worshipped all they came across with their awe and their honesty, and their prayers were promises, pieces of their heart they gave away so easily.

Adam was grateful that there were not many Ganseys of this world. He didn't think DC, let alone Henrietta, could take it. One was enough for now. _For him._

And Gansey's music was a strange enchantment, an impossible sun that shone, furious and reaching, in the dead of the velvet night that enveloped them both. He worked magic with his fingers, the same way that Adam did, turning over rocks—except that his was _real_ , his was—

_His own._

_Gansey's own, like everything else._

Adam, a borrowed magician living off the ley line, could be envious of Gansey; perhaps, in an earlier time, he would've been. But he was tired. Tired of the energy it took to _be_ magic. To envy someone else. To wish he _was_ someone else.

The hour was late, and Adam, more than anything else, was too tired to fight any more.

 _I'm yours, too,_ he admitted, in the silence of his mind, as Gansey's piano washed over him, brushed past his skin like a candle flame. Here in the spell that Gansey wove, he could confess it.

 

 

 

They would wake in the morning. Restless, tousled, with dark circles below their eyes. Gansey would smile, put on his perfect mask and head to breakfast, and Adam would follow him, partake of buttered toast and freshly ground coffee and polite conversation about Aglionby, politics, and porcelain plates.

By the light of the day, their subtleties were of a different sort.

Tonight, they had this, a reality split open to the pulsing heart at its centre, raw and wild.

 


End file.
